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Poet, playwright and actress Maya Angelou will speak at the University of New Orleans free speaker series UNO Horizons: Speakers Helping Us See Tomorrow Today on Thursday, February 12 at 7 p.m. at the UNO Lakefront Arena.

Angelou, hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary African American literature, has the ability to shatter the barriers of race and class between reader and subject through her poetry and autobiographical works. From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to her groundbreaking worth in television and film, she has opened minds with her lyrical poetry and autobiographical works.

She lectures throughout the United States and abroad and is a lifetime professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Angelou has authored 12 bestselling books and numerous magazine articles and received Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. She was awarded a Grammy award for best spoken word for On the Pulse of Morning which she recited at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993.

Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. In 1970, she became one of the first African American women to hit the bestseller's list with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which chronicles her life to age 16.

At the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s. In 1975, she received the Ladies Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in communications. She has received several honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Woman's Year, and by President Gerald Ford to the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of the American Film Institute and is among the few women members of the Director's Guild.

Angelou, who speaks French, Spanish, Italian and West African Fanti, began her career in drama and dance. She married a South African freedom fighter and lived in Cairo where she was editor of The Arab Observer, a weekly newspaper published in the Middle East. In Ghana, she was feature editor of The African Review and taught at the University of Ghana.

UNO Horizons: Speakers Helping Us See Tomorrow Today, which will continue to feature internationally known speakers, is part of UNO's 50th Anniversary celebration and marks the post-Katrina recovery of the UNO Lakefront Arena.